ALBANY — Lawmakers who are convicted of public corruption may have to forfeit their pensions. Those who are lawyers will be forced to reveal, with some exceptions, the names of their clients. And all legislators will have to verify their whereabouts to collect their daily travel stipend.

After a year of tumult that included the arrest of Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, a former speaker, on corruption charges, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said the new ethics measures proposed in the New York State budget would go a long way to cleaning up Albany. But government watchdog groups said the fine print that emerged on Tuesday suggests much will remain in the shadows.

Politicians who work for law firms with clients who have business before the state will not be required to disclose the potential conflict except under narrow circumstances such as if the lawyer worked on the client’s matter.

Lawmakers who receive a flat fee from a law firm for advice will now have to list the “principal duties” they performed for compensation, though it remains to be seen how much detail they will actually provide.

Even the pension forfeiture law, which broadens an existing law, comes with caveats: It requires a constitutional amendment, which must be approved by voters, and the corrupt lawmaker’s spouse and children can get a slice of the government-funded pension as long as they are not also found to be corrupt.

Five good-government groups, which have been pushing for broad changes to the state’s ethics laws, denounced the proposals as “incremental reform” and added that it did not address a loophole in state law that allowed corporations to give large campaign donations as smaller gifts that disguise the source of the money.

They also criticized lawmakers for not releasing details of the reform until just hours before they were set to vote on it Tuesday night, the deadline for passing the state budget, leaving little time for public discussion.

“It is hard to see how these changes in the law will have any meaningful effect on public corruption,” Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, a Democrat, said in an interview.

“There was clearly pressure for reform after the indictment of the speaker,” said Mr. Schneiderman, who recently called for a ban on lawmakers’ earning outside income. “It appears to me these are not reforms that will have any significant effect on the sort of problems we are seeing in Albany today.”

In a statement, Mr. Cuomo asserted that the ethics reforms would put in place “the nation’s strongest and most comprehensive rules for disclosure of outside income by public officials.”

“I said I would not sign a budget without real ethics reform, and this budget does just that,” Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said.

Mr. Cuomo has a troubled history pushing ethics reform. In 2010, he ran for governor on a promise to clean up Albany, and the agreement this week is the third time in four years that he has hailed what he called a significant breakthrough. He billed his ethics reforms in 2011 as a “historic piece of legislation” that brought “unprecedented disclosure,” only to be followed in 2014 by “historic reform never before done in the state of New York.”

That year, he also moved to shut down the Moreland Commission, an anticorruption panel he set up but quickly disbanded after its investigators began to look at groups with ties to Mr. Cuomo or on issues that might reflect poorly on him.

The decision became a dark stain on his first term in office, and ethics reform took a back seat until the arrest of Mr. Silver, a Manhattan Democrat. He is accused of steering real estate developers to a law firm that paid him kickbacks, and of funneling state money to a doctor who referred asbestos victims to a second law firm he worked for. Mr. Silver has pleaded not guilty.

On Saturday, in discussing the current reforms, Mr. Cuomo again described his latest effort as “historic,” calling it “ethics reform that you haven’t seen in 50 years.”

Mr. Cuomo has made strides over the years, and in addition to the ethics measures, this year’s budget provides an extra $1.2 million for the Joint Commission on Public Ethics to be used for administering and enforcing the new rules. But achieving meaningful change on ethics is not easy, largely because it requires the very consent of the lawmakers governed by it.

The most significant piece of Mr. Cuomo’s measures is the part that places new disclosure requirements on members of the Assembly and Senate. Lawyers in both chambers will have to disclose the names of their clients who were billed more than $5,000 annually. There are some exceptions, including clients who are involved in bankruptcy proceedings or police investigations.

Still, critics say much will remain unknown about the legal work of these lawmakers, especially those who do not represent clients and are paid a fixed salary for general advice or simply to lend prestige to a law firm.

The budget also tries to crack down on abuse of per diems, the $172-a-day travel reimbursements that lawmakers receive for when they are in Albany.

The legislation calls for the use of an electronic verification system requiring lawmakers prove they are in the capital in order to receive per diems.

Separately, the budget puts more restrictions barring the use of campaign money for personal expenses, another area that has long been exploited by some Albany lawmakers.

Those new restrictions also come with wiggle room. Campaign funds cannot be spent on clothes, for example, but an exception is made for “items that are used in the campaign or in the execution of the duties of public office or party position.”

Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, a watchdog group, said there was too much leeway: “The loopholes are large enough to allow them to evade the intent of the law.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Loopholes Are Seen in New Ethics Rules for Albany Legislators. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe